Piers Akerman
THERE are branding problems and branding problems.
The former rugby union great John O’Neill, who has been given the task of re-branding Sydney for tourists, is not the same John O’Neill who recently departed the job of executive director and general manager of Tourism NSW.
Two John O’Neills, both with tourism connections but just one brand that desperately needs sorting out. As it has since the Sydney Olympics.
Successive NSW governments have treated tourism as a joke. Though the Sydney Olympics are universally recognised to have been the best in the IOC’s grubby history, successive NSW premiers have squandered the opportunity they presented.
Second-string ministers such as Sandra Nori have wasted diminished budgets and the state’s market share has dwindled as other states, notably Victoria, have attracted business that should have come here.
Selling Australia, and Sydney of all places, should be simple but the egoistic idiots in the marketing business cannot help themselves as they compete to stuff it up. -While what you write is true, there are disadvantages to touring Australia. Like hospitals, public transport and crime. The state governments, and now the federal government, are that bad. - ed.
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Taking a stick to the warming alarmists
Andrew Bolt
A (relatively) easy read on the astonishing history of the fake hockey stick that was used to convince so many dupes the world hadn’t ever been this hot in human history. Learn how scientists put the walls rather than help expose a critically important mistake. And learn the limits of peer review. - One thinks it unfair to blame the peer review process when it is really the fault of politics. - ed.
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Bigotry denounced by preachers of bigotry
Andrew Bolt
On Sunday I noted that a blog run by Macquarie University ran item after item portraying Israeli Jews as war criminals and Palestinians as noble victims. The academics have responded in a way that fundamentally defines the Left, whether its in their defence of global warming theory or of communism: never mind the evidence, check the theory:
It is clear that neither Mr Bolt nor the majority of commentators to Mr Bolt’s blog posting have bothered to read Khaldoun’s policy statement. Note that it states quite emphatically that we do not support bigotry of any kind, against race, religion or gender.
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MILESTONE MISSED
Tim Blair
An attack anniversary passed last week with little notice:
Kenya and Tanzania are marking the 10th anniversary of the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.
More than 220 people were killed and 5,000 injured in the first major attack by al-Qaeda on US targets.
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THANK YOU, DICK DURBIN
Tim Blair
Columnist and author Michael Tomasky:
As the Democratic convention approaches, it’s a safe bet that the cable networks will transport us back in time to late July 2004 by showing clips of Barack Obama’s electrifying keynote address to that year’s gathering. That was the speech that made him a star ...
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“NO EVIDENCE”
Tim Blair
Tim Flannery dismisses climate change.
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SPECIES PONDERED
Tim Blair
An academic considers common folk’s viewing habits:
I imagine that consulting ratings figures would demonstrate that a lot of people do watch a lot of the Olympics.
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Your unofficial guide to LIVENEWS.com.au commentators
Tim Brunero
They dive in boots and all, cutting throats first and asking questions later, reveling in the anonymity of the internet. They spare no-one’s feelings with their invective; not journalists, not photographers, not each other - and certainly not Kevin Rudd.
Daniel David Ball
Daniel went through a spurt of being LIVENEWS.com.au’s most prolific commenter – no mean feat given the competition. He has a number of pseudonyms like Happy Fun Ball, Odd Ball and Inevita Ball and has a massive presence on YouTube. In one of his videos he sings a song to Kevin Rudd, “You see me in the street, you say how are you good luck but you don’t mean it when you know as well as me you’d rather see me paralysed.” He also had a series of very humorous videos where he sang along to tracks like Erick Bogle’s ‘And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ backed with poignant still image montages. Surprisingly Happy Fun Ball, while hating Kevin Rudd and all things Labor, is quite a moderate commentator.-:blush: Thanks Tim. I also did a rendition of "Hill Street Blues." There were no lyrics to the song, so I added them. Not many. "Cat and dogs." Plenty of room for a sequel, too. Now that I think about it, maybe a bull needs tits. Perhaps that will help Rudd solve the water crisis. No Southpark fan should mention "Red rocket." I think a mention of Gazza more than sufficient.- ed.
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Twilight of the West
Andrew Bolt
Simon Sebag Montefiore:
The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinated archduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this little war, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as the start of the twilight of America’s sole world hegemony. If the new version of the Great Game - the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century - is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the West may be in the process of losing it…
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Anzac spirit willing, but force is weak
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan says Australia’s armed forces are so under-armed that we couldn’t have responded to Georgia’s request for help even if we’d wanted to:
During the Iraq war of 2003, our F-18s had to be upgraded to go to Iraq at all, but at no stage could they be deployed in the most dangerous area around Baghdad because they did not have the electronic warfare self-protection kit. The F-111s were not able to be deployed to Iraq at all in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 or in 2003.
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Teaching Rudd Philosophy 1
Andrew Bolt
The only mistake Oliver Hartwich makes is to assume Kevin Rudd has actually read the philosopher he so bizarrely misrepresents:
Rudd claimed that the old dichotomy of Left and Right was no longer apt in the 21st century or, in his own words, that there was no longer a need to choose between (philosopher Friedrich) Hayek and Leonid Brezhnev. It’s quite a remarkable way to put it, as if the choice between a liberal economist and a Soviet leader should be a tough one for a democratic prime minister…
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Can the unions count on their new mates?
Andrew Bolt
Here’s a test for the Rudd Government - whether to back the unions or allow Telstra to exercise its freedom to make changes that will save this private company $50 million:
TELSTRA has devised a secret union-busting strategy to save $50 million in labour costs over the next three years… Confidential Telstra documents obtained by the Herald show the company is gearing up to put non-union enterprise agreements to its staff in coming weeks, targeting business units with low unionisation rates.
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Waiting for Meagher to have a nice time
Andrew Bolt
No more spectacular sight than that of a politician enjoying their privileges - and a big night out. Miranda Devine describes:
Health Minister, Reba Meagher, ... 40, had kept her ministerial driver on standby while she attended a private birthday party last Wednesday night at hip new nightspot Ivy. In the throes of new love, she caught a cab home with dashing party host Adam Walters, a Channel Nine journalist turned flak-catcher, who is joining the Premier’s office as a senior policy adviser.
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So what fear did we rescue them from?
Andrew Bolt
If they really were fleeing a genocidal police state, why would they want to return just two years later?
Some of the 43 refugees who have been granted asylum by Australia wanted to return their home in the Papua province in the easternmost of Indonesia, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said on Monday.
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Smile in your jackboots, IOC pleads
Andrew Bolt
If the 110,000 Chinese soldiers and police who are patrolling the Games sites, locking up dissidents, spying on journalists, crushing protests, censoring the Internet, coaching spectators and shutting out the locals also smiled as they did their work, the International Olympic Comittee would be completely satisfied:
Chinese security forces should smile more to stop terrifying foreign visitors, a Norwegian member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Gerhard Heiberg, told the Aftenposten daily on Monday.
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Kill all Western polluters
Andrew Bolt
One Edinburgh Festival Fringe act suggests a new green desperation, if reviewer Susan Mansfield reads it right:
We accept, for example, that climate change exists, and that we should do something about it, but how?…
This is the question Irish comedian Abie Philbin Bowman ... is engaging with in his new show, Eco-Friendly Jihad… This one has to do with meeting a pretty, young Scots-Bangla woman who adheres to the view that the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to kill as many rich Westerners as possible.
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Media revolt in Beijing
Andrew Bolt
The Western journalists in Beijing get bolshie about China’s media restrictions:
In what was the most fractious IOC-Bocog press conference yet, journalists repeatedly demanded to know whether a single Chinese citizen had been granted permission to use the three Protest Parks set up for the Games.
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